Saturday, December 21, 2013

No, not that really “happy, happy, happy” Duck family; I mean our “happy, happy, happy” First Family. Here they are being sent off on their 17 day Hawaiian hiatus.

Yep, they gone!

Goodness! We were in such a hurry to start our vacation that Lady M left without her trousers. She boarded Air Force Won wearing just tights. That’s the sort of thing that happens when she’s rushed and she doesn’t get to take her own flight on Air Force Won Too.

Consider this Beyoncé Boo-tay shot my Christmas present to you.

Butt I better just shut up about other people’s butts: apparently talking about them can get you in a heap of trouble.

So carry-on everyone: time is short, and there are so many Christmas treats to make.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Clearly Phil Robertson is not as articulate as Pope Francis, butt as far as I can determine they both said essentially the same thing. So why is the Pope Man of the Year and old Phil a dead duck?

Maybe it’s because, as head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis is not required to meet the New American Standards of political correctness, which, in the current case have been determined by GLAAD (Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).

I should note here that GLAAD has been authorized by the LGBT Alliance to serve as the new Gay arm of the Rainbow Push Coalition. As such it serves as the official clearing house of unacceptable speech regarding homosexuals in America; A&E was simply bowing to GLAAD’s newly designated role as the new centurion. And since they’ve determined that this new tolerance will not tolerate Christian beliefs regarding homosexual activity, they’ve determined that anyone who thinks that way is an ignorant “homophobe.” And in the new hate speech lexicon, “homophobe” is the new “racist” so I’m sure you can see that what Phil Robertson said was totally unacceptable.

I shouldn’t be dealing with this problem today because I need to finish up my Christmas shopping, butt I have this niggling (can I say that?) little problem eating away at at the logic circuit in my mother board: it has to do with the adoption of a politically correct lexicon of approved speech in America. Doesn’t the adoption of an agreed upon politically correct lexicon likewise require the adoption of politically correct group-think - which is quintessentially un-American? Worse, doesn’t it require that someone serve as the clearing house for what is, collectively, approved as “politically correct?”

Exactly who would that be, I wonder?

No, really; don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.

I think maybe we should ban political correctness and go back to the old fashioned method of dealing with different opinions in the public arena: relegate the outcome to the superiority of the idea itself. You know: speaking your mind and defending your position on its merits? Not that we would have many people capable of doing that anymore, critical thinking skills having been abandoned in the public education system for a couple of generations now. Advancing your position through logical argument is a bit more difficult when you wouldn’t know a logic flaw from an cheeseburger.

And speaking of Logic Lessons: here’s what happens when logic dies: after the adoption of new Obamacare standards forced insurance companies to cancel millions of “sub-standard plans” that didn’t meet the new “minimal” Obamacare standards, Big Guy’s little people injected a new twist yesterday. HHS announced that anybody who had their policy canceled because it was sub-standard and now can’t afford to buy the new Affordable Care Act plans available through the Obamacare Exchanges can get an exemption that allows them to buy “catastrophic coverage” policies instead. By Obamacare definition, aren’t the catastrophic-coverage-only policies the same “sub-standard” plans that Obamacare required the insurance companies to cancel in the first place? Or is there something wrong with my logic circuits?

Don’t worry about the logic, we can fix this thing if we all join hands and wish really hard.

Well, maybe you can figure it out, I’m going Christmas shopping to spread what’s left of my wealth around the old fashioned way.

Carry on.

Liberal Logic 101: Judge not less ye be judged. And we can’t have that.

“The first lady is the best salesperson” for the White House, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett told POLITICO. She’s getting involved now, Jarrett said, because she’s the right person to convey the message of the moment: that the uninsured — especially young people and minorities — should look for insurance on exchanges and that those with insurance are already feeling the benefits of the law.

And you know what we’re sellin’ needs a good saleswoman when she shows up wearing a high-necked, long sleeved, below the knee, belted at the waist, gray frock. With pearls.

So how bad is it? Well, so far it’s 67%-want-to-delay-Obamacare-53%-forever bad. Not only that, butt the same percent of Americans are wishing Obamacare’s namesake would likewise go away for ever. Let’s face it: when you’ve lost Barbara Walters the end is neigh.

Because who better to evangelize for Obamacare than moms who just recently discovered how easy it is to take other peoples money for things you used to have to pay for yourself? Who wouldn’t want that for their kids…and themselves?

"I got so mad that I went to my phone and started calling all the political people and giving them what for," Spanke told The Billings Gazette. That was before she learned she was eligible for a policy at a much lower cost.

After angrily calling her state auditor's office, Spanke, a self-employed artist in her 50s, found she was eligible for a federal subsidy. Her new insurance will cover her for a mere $30 to $40 a month with a deductible of only $500. She had been paying $350 a month for a Blue Cross policy with a $5,000 deductible. "I went from a horrible policy that didn't cover anything, that was breaking me, to the best policy at the best price I've had since I was in my 20s," she said.

So see there?

“Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.” – Nancy Pelosi

Just like Nan promised, only being an artist was Sue’s day job – so it’s even better!

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Guy’s big meeting with the big guys (and “gals” – do I still have to say that, or can we go back to generic inclusion now that the Dems have won the War on Women? Or is it sexist of me to even ask?) from the tech industry.

BO, Joe, Val, and a whole bunch of “people” who actually do “write code”

“That is not going to happen,” said an executive at one of the major tech companies represented at the meeting. “We are there to talk about the NSA,”

Boy, talk about a bunch of grinches.

Senior executives from the companies whose bosses were present at the meeting said they were determined to keep the discussion focused on the NSA, despite the White House declaring in advance that it would focus on ways of improving the functionality of the troubled health insurance website, healthcare.gov, among other matters.

Unlike some people around here these tech-execs don’t let the junior staff around here call the shots. If you know what I mean, and I think you do.

Anyway, Big Guy did announce that he recently hired Kurt DelBene to head up his newly configured Healthcare.gov A-team. Kurt was a high level exec at Microsoft until Monday, and his wife Suzane was just elected to Congress last year - as a Democrat! So that works out well; they can both live in Washington D.C. now and get regular invitations to Big White events.

I know some people are still wondering why Barry didn’t assign his A-team to Obamacare right from the start, butt the answer to that is easy: hello! We had an election going on around the same time. So the A-team was assigned to the more critical task of convincing everyone that Obamacare (a term we were fond of at the time) was the best thing since FDR invented Social Security, and that you would love it too if you just reelected its namesake (Obamacare, not Social Security). Oh, and did I mention that, during the campaign, if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period.

He may not look like an A-lister, butt he is one of ours!

So we ended up with the best interactive identification and solicitation campaign system that money could buy. It was designed with state-of-the-art NSA private sector data mining technology to spygleanharvest obtain meta-data from your personal emails, contacts and internet transactions in order to convert it to micro-data that could then be used to harass solicit your help to reelect the President. It was the best campaign machine ever designed in the entire history of the world! Unfortunately, that left our B,C and D team to build Healthcare.gov.

So hopefully that explains why you received 12 solicitations to donate $5 or more to win a chance to win a dinner date with Big Guy,

butt you can’t enter your name on Healthcare.gov.

I think you’ll appreciated the dilemma, it was an issue of first getting reelected in order to pursue all our good works on behalf of the fundamental transformation of Amerika. As you well know, you’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelet. So while there may be a few little lingering issues with our Healthcare.gov system, the choice between reelection and functioning Obamacare site was a no-brainer. Especially since if you like your insurance, you can keep it. Period.

And see? It all worked out, here we are: reelected, through our A-team’s efforts to design the most high-tech voter mobilization system in the history of the world.

“I love you back!”

And here we are, working through the glitches of Healthcare.gov with the help of our techie friends. After Big Guy and Val-Jar’s two and a half hour meeting listening to Big Technology express their displeasure with their role in the NSA spying phony scandal, the tech giants agreed to help Barry upgrade some of the technology currently designed into his system. I’m not saying that Obamacare isn’t state-of-the-art, I’m just saying a little technology might be able to address some of the complaints we’ve been getting about the last century requirements that seem to be built into the system. Next to “not being able to log in,” these are the top complaints about the hi-tech healthcare system:

You have to mail your application in when the system is down

So your insurance company can review it by hand

Then you need to verify you are actually enrolled by placing a phone call to the insurer and/or exchange

The insurance companies have to “guestimate” the amount of subsidies their enrollees are eligible for until such time as the actual data is available – sometime in “late November” 2014.

So our techie friends promised to come up with a few tweaks and “workarounds” to get us over the “hump”

This should get us up to 2000 technology levels: good enough for government work

Although they actually suggested skipping the workarounds and just start over from scratch as the Healthcare.gov team doesn’t seem to know much about making omelets.

Omelet Fail

Butt we’ve already spend nearly $900 million on the current Healthcare.gov site, and you know how fond we are of throwing good money after bad around here.

Today’s post brought to you by the Humpty Dumpty Egg Company, proud sponsor of the Obama “words matter” campaign:

There’s been a lot of chatter following Big Guy’s big meeting with the big guys (and “gals” – do I still have to say that, or can we go back to generic inclusion now that the Dems have won the War on Women? Or is it sexist of me to even ask?) from the tech industry.

BO, Joe, Val, and a whole bunch of “people” who actually do “write code”

“That is not going to happen,” said an executive at one of the major tech companies represented at the meeting. “We are there to talk about the NSA,”

Boy, talk about a bunch of grinches.

Senior executives from the companies whose bosses were present at the meeting said they were determined to keep the discussion focused on the NSA, despite the White House declaring in advance that it would focus on ways of improving the functionality of the troubled health insurance website, healthcare.gov, among other matters.

Unlike some people around here these tech-execs don’t let the junior staff around here call the shots. If you know what I mean, and I think you do.

Anyway, Big Guy did announce that he recently hired Kurt DelBene to head up his newly configured Healthcare.gov A-team. Kurt was a high level exec at Microsoft until Monday, and his wife Suzane was just elected to Congress last year - as a Democrat! So that works out well; they can both live in Washington D.C. now and get regular invitations to Big White events.

I know some people are still wondering why Barry didn’t assign his A-team to Obamacare right from the start, butt the answer to that is easy: hello! We had an election going on around the same time. So the A-team was assigned to the more critical task of convincing everyone that Obamacare (a term we were fond of at the time) was the best thing since FDR invented Social Security, and that you would love it too if you just reelected its namesake (Obamacare, not Social Security). Oh, and did I mention that, during the campaign, if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period.

He may not look like an A-lister, butt he is one of ours!

So we ended up with the best interactive identification and solicitation campaign system that money could buy. It was designed with state-of-the-art NSA private sector data mining technology to spygleanharvest obtain meta-data from your personal emails, contacts and internet transactions in order to convert it to micro-data that could then be used to harass solicit your help to reelect the President. It was the best campaign machine ever designed in the entire history of the world! Unfortunately, that left our B,C and D team to build Healthcare.gov.

So hopefully that explains why you received 12 solicitations to donate $5 or more to win a chance to win a dinner date with Big Guy,

butt you can’t enter your name on Healthcare.gov.

I think you’ll appreciated the dilemma, it was an issue of first getting reelected in order to pursue all our good works on behalf of the fundamental transformation of Amerika. As you well know, you’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelet. So while there may be a few little lingering issues with our Healthcare.gov system, the choice between reelection and functioning Obamacare site was a no-brainer. Especially since if you like your insurance, you can keep it. Period.

And see? It all worked out, here we are: reelected, through our A-team’s efforts to design the most high-tech voter mobilization system in the history of the world.

“I love you back!”

And here we are, working through the glitches of Healthcare.gov with the help of our techie friends. After Big Guy and Val-Jar’s two and a half hour meeting listening to Big Technology express their displeasure with their role in the NSA spying phony scandal, the tech giants agreed to help Barry upgrade some of the technology currently designed into his system. I’m not saying that Obamacare isn’t state-of-the-art, I’m just saying a little technology might be able to address some of the complaints we’ve been getting about the last century requirements that seem to be built into the system. Next to “not being able to log in,” these are the top complaints about the hi-tech healthcare system:

You have to mail your application in when the system is down

So your insurance company can review it by hand

Then you need to verify you are actually enrolled by placing a phone call to the insurer and/or exchange

The insurance companies have to “guestimate” the amount of subsidies their enrollees are eligible for until such time as the actual data is available – sometime in “late November” 2014.

So our techie friends promised to come up with a few tweaks and “workarounds” to get us over the “hump”

This should get us up to 2000 technology levels: good enough for government work

Although they actually suggested skipping the workarounds and just start over from scratch as the Healthcare.gov team doesn’t seem to know much about making omelets.

Omelet Fail

Butt we’ve already spend nearly $900 million on the current Healthcare.gov site, and you know how fond we are of throwing good money after bad around here.

Today’s post brought to you by the Humpty Dumpty Egg Company, proud sponsor of the Obama “words matter” campaign:

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

I’m going to advise everyone associated with the Big White to just say no to any more photographs for the rest of the month. For one thing, Big White official photographer, Pete Souza, seems to be on Winter Holiday break and turning things over to the B team never works out well (see Obamacare). I mean seriously, when the best shots involve a dog that generally doesn’t know how to comport herself, it’s probably time for everyone to take a break.

I was talking about Sunny - who did you think I was talking about?

Butt can I cut a break here? No. Leave it to crazy old Uncle Joey to take it upon himself to reprise not only last week’s embarrassing photo theme (“Don’t be that selfie guy”),

as well as his own “don’t be that creepy old white guy” theme:

Thank goodness there were Secret Service guys on hand. That troll looks homicidal.

Here he is at one of our parties with Amie Parnes, The Hill‘s White House Correspondent: awkward!

Joey, advancing the Regime’s agenda of Upward-mobility.

As long as we’re reprising themes, how about this little number from my Capitalist Pig collection of ‘08 and ‘12?